As the food business goes global, the range and nature of consumer anxieties grows ever more complex. While consumer stomachs become recipients of lethal cocktail of chemicals, the food market profits skyrocket in direct proportion. For this, nobody else is to blame except the Indian consumer, who has yet to abjure the lure of gimmicky packaging of global products and become discerning enough to turn her gaze homewards to local, seasonal and organic produce. If one lets the seasons guide one's consumption, an Indian not only follows the food principles of Ayurveda, but also routinely observes the culinary practices woven into Indian food traditions.

When to sow and when to reap, how to cook or consume, this knowledge has been circulating in Indian kitchen practices for generations. For the consumer, the food methodologies prevailing in the field and kitchen are governed by regional realities of production and access. These, however, are under immediate threat of being sidelined by the pushy food market. Thus, where you earlier saw the coconut rule the South, and mustard permeate every aspect of food consumption in North India, you can currently watch these two stalwarts being jostled around by a range of imported, nondescript edible oils, making tall health claims, not at all substantiated by either experience or experiment.

The new concept of 'slow-food', in the West, encapsulates a holistic approach to production and consumption of food. It has been described as an "intersection of ethics and pleasure, of ecology and gastronomy", but the question is: how is this new-found insight any different from our food knowledge of yore?

Adding to the already confused and confusing food scenario is the raging controversy which surrounds GM food concerns. By now it is very clear that much of the pro-GM research and legislation is funded and promoted by agri-business lobbyists. However, regulating genetic modification in food should ideally aim at economic benefits for all stakeholders. We have all come to believe that science and technology have a momentum of their own and have earned an inviolable right to advance, while riding roughshod over human priorities. What we need to understand is, that new genetic technologies are so far reaching in their social and environmental implications, that it is imperative that we all get involved in any decisions being taken in this regard.

Even while we plan a Food Safety and Standards Bill, which, as of now, appears to be loaded in favour of the industry rather than the consumers, we should safeguard the interests of future generations by preparing for the emerging scientific and technological challenges in the sector.

Neutraceuticals, Nanotechnology, Smart-breeding, besides genetically modified foods are all hovering on the horizon to overtake our markets, while we dither and debate endlessly. Our so called 'unorganised' food sector, which in actuality is carrying forward our local, food traditions needs to be safeguarded as well, before it is road-rollered out of existence under the merciless juggernaut of market forces.
Food is the storehouse of the panch-tattvas, harmonizing the cosmic principles of all life in itself. When we produce and consume food, we mobilize the rasa of life through the cosmic chain. When we pollute and tinker with these panch-bhootas we do so at our own peril, because we interfere with the cosmic memory held by the genetic code — the DNA.

"May the universe never abuse food.
Breath is food,
the body eats food,
this body rests on breath.
Breath rests on the body,
food is resting on food."